Getting Started with Engines¶ ↑
In this guide you will learn about engines and how they can be used to provide additional functionality to their host applications through a clean and very easy-to-use interface.
After reading this guide, you will know:
What makes an engine. How to generate an engine. Building features for the engine. Hooking the engine into an application. Overriding engine functionality in the application.
What are engines?¶ ↑
Engines can be considered miniature applications that provide functionality
to their host applications. A Rails application is actually just a
“supercharged” engine, with the Rails::Application
class
inheriting a lot of its behavior from Rails::Engine
.
Therefore, engines and applications can be thought of almost the same thing, just with subtle differences, as you'll see throughout this guide. Engines and applications also share a common structure.
Engines are also closely related to plugins. The two share a common
lib
directory structure, and are both generated using the
rails plugin new
generator. The difference is that an engine
is considered a “full plugin” by Rails (as indicated by the
--full
option that's passed to the generator command).
We'll actually be using the --mountable
option here, which
includes all the features of --full
, and then some. This guide
will refer to these “full plugins” simply as “engines” throughout. An
engine can be a plugin, and a plugin can
be an engine.
The engine that will be created in this guide will be called “blorgh”. This engine will provide blogging functionality to its host applications, allowing for new articles and comments to be created. At the beginning of this guide, you will be working solely within the engine itself, but in later sections you'll see how to hook it into an application.
Engines can also be isolated from their host applications. This means that
an application is able to have a path provided by a routing helper such as
articles_path
and use an engine also that provides a path also
called articles_path
, and the two would not clash. Along with
this, controllers, models and table names are also namespaced. You'll
see how to do this later in this guide.
It's important to keep in mind at all times that the application should always* take precedence over its engines. An application is the object that has final say in what goes on in its environment. The engine should only be enhancing it, rather than changing it drastically.
To see demonstrations of other engines, check out Devise, an engine that provides authentication for its parent applications, or Forem, an engine that provides forum functionality. There's also Spree which provides an e-commerce platform, and RefineryCMS, a CMS engine.
Finally, engines would not have been possible without the work of James Adam, Piotr Sarnacki, the Rails Core Team, and a number of other people. If you ever meet them, don't forget to say thanks!
Generating an engine¶ ↑
To generate an engine, you will need to run the plugin generator and pass it options as appropriate to the need. For the “blorgh” example, you will need to create a “mountable” engine, running this command in a terminal:
$ rails plugin new blorgh --mountable
The full list of options for the plugin generator may be seen by typing:
$ rails plugin --help
The --mountable
option tells the generator that you want to
create a “mountable” and namespace-isolated engine. This generator will
provide the same skeleton structure as would the --full
option. The --full
option tells the generator that you want to
create an engine, including a skeleton structure that provides the
following:
An `app` directory tree A `config/routes.rb` file: ```ruby Rails.application.routes.draw do end ``` A file at `lib/blorgh/engine.rb`, which is identical in function to a standard Rails application's `config/application.rb` file: ```ruby module Blorgh class Engine < ::Rails::Engine end end ```
The --mountable
option will add to the --full
option:
Asset manifest files (`application.js` and `application.css`) A namespaced `ApplicationController` stub A namespaced `ApplicationHelper` stub A layout view template for the engine Namespace isolation to `config/routes.rb`: ```ruby Blorgh::Engine.routes.draw do end ``` Namespace isolation to `lib/blorgh/engine.rb`: ```ruby module Blorgh class Engine < ::Rails::Engine isolate_namespace Blorgh end end ```
Additionally, the --mountable
option tells the generator to
mount the engine inside the dummy testing application located at
test/dummy
by adding the following to the dummy
application's routes file at test/dummy/config/routes.rb
:
mount Blorgh::Engine => "/blorgh"
Inside an Engine¶ ↑
Critical Files¶ ↑
At the root of this brand new engine's directory lives a
blorgh.gemspec
file. When you include the engine into an
application later on, you will do so with this line in the Rails
application's Gemfile
:
gem 'blorgh', path: "vendor/engines/blorgh"
Don't forget to run bundle install
as usual. By specifying
it as a gem within the Gemfile
, Bundler will load it as such,
parsing this blorgh.gemspec
file and requiring a file within
the lib
directory called lib/blorgh.rb
. This file
requires the blorgh/engine.rb
file (located at
lib/blorgh/engine.rb
) and defines a base module called
Blorgh
.
require "blorgh/engine" module Blorgh end
TIP: Some engines choose to use this file to put global configuration
options for their engine. It's a relatively good idea, so if you want
to offer configuration options, the file where your engine's
module
is defined is perfect for that. Place the methods
inside the module and you'll be good to go.
Within lib/blorgh/engine.rb
is the base class for the engine:
module Blorgh class Engine < ::Rails::Engine isolate_namespace Blorgh end end
By inheriting from the Rails::Engine
class, this gem notifies
Rails that there's an engine at the specified path, and will correctly
mount the engine inside the application, performing tasks such as adding
the app
directory of the engine to the load path for models,
mailers, controllers and views.
The isolate_namespace
method here deserves special notice.
This call is responsible for isolating the controllers, models, routes and
other things into their own namespace, away from similar components inside
the application. Without this, there is a possibility that the engine's
components could “leak” into the application, causing unwanted disruption,
or that important engine components could be overridden by similarly named
things within the application. One of the examples of such conflicts is
helpers. Without calling isolate_namespace
, the engine's
helpers would be included in an application's controllers.
NOTE: It is highly recommended that the
isolate_namespace
line be left within the Engine
class definition. Without it, classes generated in an engine may*
conflict with an application.
What this isolation of the namespace means is that a model generated by a
call to bin/rails g model
, such as bin/rails g model
article
, won't be called Article
, but instead be
namespaced and called Blorgh::Article
. In addition, the table
for the model is namespaced, becoming blorgh_articles
, rather
than simply articles
. Similar to the model namespacing, a
controller called ArticlesController
becomes
Blorgh::ArticlesController
and the views for that controller
will not be at app/views/articles
, but
app/views/blorgh/articles
instead. Mailers are namespaced as
well.
Finally, routes will also be isolated within the engine. This is one of the most important parts about namespacing, and is discussed later in the Routes section of this guide.
app
Directory¶ ↑
Inside the app
directory are the standard assets
,
controllers
, helpers
, mailers
,
models
and views
directories that you should be
familiar with from an application. The helpers
,
mailers
and models
directories are empty, so they
aren't described in this section. We'll look more into models in a
future section, when we're writing the engine.
Within the app/assets
directory, there are the
images
, javascripts
and stylesheets
directories which, again, you should be familiar with due to their
similarity to an application. One difference here, however, is that each
directory contains a sub-directory with the engine name. Because this
engine is going to be namespaced, its assets should be too.
Within the app/controllers
directory there is a
blorgh
directory that contains a file called
application_controller.rb
. This file will provide any common
functionality for the controllers of the engine. The blorgh
directory is where the other controllers for the engine will go. By placing
them within this namespaced directory, you prevent them from possibly
clashing with identically-named controllers within other engines or even
within the application.
NOTE: The ApplicationController
class inside an engine is
named just like a Rails application in order to make it easier for you to
convert your applications into engines.
Lastly, the app/views
directory contains a
layouts
folder, which contains a file at
blorgh/application.html.erb
. This file allows you to specify a
layout for the engine. If this engine is to be used as a stand-alone
engine, then you would add any customization to its layout in this file,
rather than the application's
app/views/layouts/application.html.erb
file.
If you don't want to force a layout on to users of the engine, then you can delete this file and reference a different layout in the controllers of your engine.
bin
Directory¶ ↑
This directory contains one file, bin/rails
, which enables you
to use the rails
sub-commands and generators just like you
would within an application. This means that you will be able to generate
new controllers and models for this engine very easily by running commands
like this:
$ bin/rails g model
Keep in mind, of course, that anything generated with these commands inside
of an engine that has isolate_namespace
in the
Engine
class will be namespaced.
test
Directory¶ ↑
The test
directory is where tests for the engine will go. To
test the engine, there is a cut-down version of a Rails application
embedded within it at test/dummy
. This application will mount
the engine in the test/dummy/config/routes.rb
file:
Rails.application.routes.draw do mount Blorgh::Engine => "/blorgh" end
This line mounts the engine at the path /blorgh
, which will
make it accessible through the application only at that path.
Inside the test directory there is the test/integration
directory, where integration tests for the engine should be placed. Other
directories can be created in the test
directory as well. For
example, you may wish to create a test/models
directory for
your model tests.
Providing engine functionality¶ ↑
The engine that this guide covers provides submitting articles and commenting functionality and follows a similar thread to the Getting Started Guide, with some new twists.
Generating an Article Resource¶ ↑
The first thing to generate for a blog engine is the Article
model and related controller. To quickly generate this, you can use the
Rails scaffold generator.
$ bin/rails generate scaffold article title:string text:text
This command will output this information:
invoke active_record create db/migrate/[timestamp]_create_blorgh_articles.rb create app/models/blorgh/article.rb invoke test_unit create test/models/blorgh/article_test.rb create test/fixtures/blorgh/articles.yml invoke resource_route route resources :articles invoke scaffold_controller create app/controllers/blorgh/articles_controller.rb invoke erb create app/views/blorgh/articles create app/views/blorgh/articles/index.html.erb create app/views/blorgh/articles/edit.html.erb create app/views/blorgh/articles/show.html.erb create app/views/blorgh/articles/new.html.erb create app/views/blorgh/articles/_form.html.erb invoke test_unit create test/controllers/blorgh/articles_controller_test.rb invoke helper create app/helpers/blorgh/articles_helper.rb invoke assets invoke js create app/assets/javascripts/blorgh/articles.js invoke css create app/assets/stylesheets/blorgh/articles.css invoke css create app/assets/stylesheets/scaffold.css
The first thing that the scaffold generator does is invoke the
active_record
generator, which generates a migration and a
model for the resource. Note here, however, that the migration is called
create_blorgh_articles
rather than the usual
create_articles
. This is due to the
isolate_namespace
method called in the
Blorgh::Engine
class's definition. The model here is also
namespaced, being placed at app/models/blorgh/article.rb
rather than app/models/article.rb
due to the
isolate_namespace
call within the Engine
class.
Next, the test_unit
generator is invoked for this model,
generating a model test at test/models/blorgh/article_test.rb
(rather than test/models/article_test.rb
) and a fixture at
test/fixtures/blorgh/articles.yml
(rather than
test/fixtures/articles.yml
).
After that, a line for the resource is inserted into the
config/routes.rb
file for the engine. This line is simply
resources :articles
, turning the config/routes.rb
file for the engine into this:
Blorgh::Engine.routes.draw do resources :articles end
Note here that the routes are drawn upon the Blorgh::Engine
object rather than the YourApp::Application
class. This is so
that the engine routes are confined to the engine itself and can be mounted
at a specific point as shown in the test
directory section. It also causes the engine's routes to be
isolated from those routes that are within the application. The Routes section of this guide describes it in detail.
Next, the scaffold_controller
generator is invoked, generating
a controller called Blorgh::ArticlesController
(at
app/controllers/blorgh/articles_controller.rb
) and its related
views at app/views/blorgh/articles
. This generator also
generates a test for the controller
(test/controllers/blorgh/articles_controller_test.rb
) and a
helper (app/helpers/blorgh/articles_controller.rb
).
Everything this generator has created is neatly namespaced. The
controller's class is defined within the Blorgh
module:
module Blorgh class ArticlesController < ApplicationController ... end end
NOTE: The ApplicationController
class being inherited from
here is the Blorgh::ApplicationController
, not an
application's ApplicationController
.
The helper inside app/helpers/blorgh/articles_helper.rb
is
also namespaced:
module Blorgh module ArticlesHelper ... end end
This helps prevent conflicts with any other engine or application that may have an article resource as well.
Finally, the assets for this resource are generated in two files:
app/assets/javascripts/blorgh/articles.js
and
app/assets/stylesheets/blorgh/articles.css
. You'll see how
to use these a little later.
By default, the scaffold styling is not applied to the engine because the
engine's layout file,
app/views/layouts/blorgh/application.html.erb
, doesn't
load it. To make the scaffold styling apply, insert this line into the
<head>
tag of this layout:
<%= stylesheet_link_tag "scaffold" %>
You can see what the engine has so far by running rake
db:migrate
at the root of our engine to run the migration generated
by the scaffold generator, and then running rails server
in
test/dummy
. When you open
http://localhost:3000/blorgh/articles
you will see the default
scaffold that has been generated. Click around! You've just generated
your first engine's first functions.
If you'd rather play around in the console, rails console
will also work just like a Rails application. Remember: the
Article
model is namespaced, so to reference it you must call
it as Blorgh::Article
.
>> Blorgh::Article.find(1) => #<Blorgh::Article id: 1 ...>
One final thing is that the articles
resource for this engine
should be the root of the engine. Whenever someone goes to the root path
where the engine is mounted, they should be shown a list of articles. This
can be made to happen if this line is inserted into the
config/routes.rb
file inside the engine:
root to: "articles#index"
Now people will only need to go to the root of the engine to see all the
articles, rather than visiting /articles
. This means that
instead of http://localhost:3000/blorgh/articles
, you only
need to go to http://localhost:3000/blorgh
now.
Generating a Comments Resource¶ ↑
Now that the engine can create new articles, it only makes sense to add commenting functionality as well. To do this, you'll need to generate a comment model, a comment controller and then modify the articles scaffold to display comments and allow people to create new ones.
From the application root, run the model generator. Tell it to generate a
Comment
model, with the related table having two columns: a
article_id
integer and text
text column.
$ bin/rails generate model Comment article_id:integer text:text
This will output the following:
invoke active_record create db/migrate/[timestamp]_create_blorgh_comments.rb create app/models/blorgh/comment.rb invoke test_unit create test/models/blorgh/comment_test.rb create test/fixtures/blorgh/comments.yml
This generator call will generate just the necessary model files it needs,
namespacing the files under a blorgh
directory and creating a
model class called Blorgh::Comment
. Now run the migration to
create our blorgh_comments table:
$ rake db:migrate
To show the comments on an article, edit
app/views/blorgh/articles/show.html.erb
and add this line
before the “Edit” link:
<h3>Comments</h3> <%= render @article.comments %>
This line will require there to be a has_many
association for
comments defined on the Blorgh::Article
model, which there
isn't right now. To define one, open
app/models/blorgh/article.rb
and add this line into the model:
has_many :comments
Turning the model into this:
module Blorgh class Article < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :comments end end
NOTE: Because the has_many
is defined inside a class that is
inside the Blorgh
module, Rails will know that you want to use
the Blorgh::Comment
model for these objects, so there's no
need to specify that using the :class_name
option here.
Next, there needs to be a form so that comments can be created on an
article. To add this, put this line underneath the call to render
@article.comments
in
app/views/blorgh/articles/show.html.erb
:
<%= render "blorgh/comments/form" %>
Next, the partial that this line will render needs to exist. Create a new
directory at app/views/blorgh/comments
and in it a new file
called _form.html.erb
which has this content to create the
required partial:
<h3>New comment</h3> <%= form_for [@article, @article.comments.build] do |f| %> <p> <%= f.label :text %><br> <%= f.text_area :text %> </p> <%= f.submit %> <% end %>
When this form is submitted, it is going to attempt to perform a
POST
request to a route of
/articles/:article_id/comments
within the engine. This route
doesn't exist at the moment, but can be created by changing the
resources :articles
line inside config/routes.rb
into these lines:
resources :articles do resources :comments end
This creates a nested route for the comments, which is what the form requires.
The route now exists, but the controller that this route goes to does not. To create it, run this command from the application root:
$ bin/rails g controller comments
This will generate the following things:
create app/controllers/blorgh/comments_controller.rb invoke erb exist app/views/blorgh/comments invoke test_unit create test/controllers/blorgh/comments_controller_test.rb invoke helper create app/helpers/blorgh/comments_helper.rb invoke assets invoke js create app/assets/javascripts/blorgh/comments.js invoke css create app/assets/stylesheets/blorgh/comments.css
The form will be making a POST
request to
/articles/:article_id/comments
, which will correspond with the
create
action in Blorgh::CommentsController
. This
action needs to be created, which can be done by putting the following
lines inside the class definition in
app/controllers/blorgh/comments_controller.rb
:
def create @article = Article.find(params[:article_id]) @comment = @article.comments.create(comment_params) flash[:notice] = "Comment has been created!" redirect_to articles_path end private def comment_params params.require(:comment).permit(:text) end
This is the final step required to get the new comment form working. Displaying the comments, however, is not quite right yet. If you were to create a comment right now, you would see this error:
Missing partial blorgh/comments/_comment with {:handlers=>[:erb, :builder], :formats=>[:html], :locale=>[:en, :en]}. Searched in: * "/Users/ryan/Sites/side_projects/blorgh/test/dummy/app/views" * "/Users/ryan/Sites/side_projects/blorgh/app/views"
The engine is unable to find the partial required for rendering the
comments. Rails looks first in the application's
(test/dummy
) app/views
directory and then in the
engine's app/views
directory. When it can't find it,
it will throw this error. The engine knows to look for
blorgh/comments/_comment
because the model object it is
receiving is from the Blorgh::Comment
class.
This partial will be responsible for rendering just the comment text, for
now. Create a new file at
app/views/blorgh/comments/_comment.html.erb
and put this line
inside it:
<%= comment_counter + 1 %>. <%= comment.text %>
The comment_counter
local variable is given to us by the
<%= render @article.comments %>
call, which will define
it automatically and increment the counter as it iterates through each
comment. It's used in this example to display a small number next to
each comment when it's created.
That completes the comment function of the blogging engine. Now it's time to use it within an application.
Hooking Into an Application¶ ↑
Using an engine within an application is very easy. This section covers how
to mount the engine into an application and the initial setup required, as
well as linking the engine to a User
class provided by the
application to provide ownership for articles and comments within the
engine.
Mounting the Engine¶ ↑
First, the engine needs to be specified inside the application's
Gemfile
. If there isn't an application handy to test this
out in, generate one using the rails new
command outside of
the engine directory like this:
$ rails new unicorn
Usually, specifying the engine inside the Gemfile would be done by specifying it as a normal, everyday gem.
gem 'devise'
However, because you are developing the blorgh
engine on your
local machine, you will need to specify the :path
option in
your Gemfile
:
gem 'blorgh', path: "/path/to/blorgh"
Then run bundle
to install the gem.
As described earlier, by placing the gem in the Gemfile
it
will be loaded when Rails is loaded. It will first require
lib/blorgh.rb
from the engine, then
lib/blorgh/engine.rb
, which is the file that defines the major
pieces of functionality for the engine.
To make the engine's functionality accessible from within an
application, it needs to be mounted in that application's
config/routes.rb
file:
mount Blorgh::Engine, at: "/blog"
This line will mount the engine at /blog
in the application.
Making it accessible at http://localhost:3000/blog
when the
application runs with rails server
.
NOTE: Other engines, such as Devise, handle this a little differently by
making you specify custom helpers (such as devise_for
) in the
routes. These helpers do exactly the same thing, mounting pieces of the
engines's functionality at a pre-defined path which may be
customizable.
Engine setup¶ ↑
The engine contains migrations for the blorgh_articles
and
blorgh_comments
table which need to be created in the
application's database so that the engine's models can query them
correctly. To copy these migrations into the application use this command:
$ rake blorgh:install:migrations
If you have multiple engines that need migrations copied over, use
railties:install:migrations
instead:
$ rake railties:install:migrations
This command, when run for the first time, will copy over all the migrations from the engine. When run the next time, it will only copy over migrations that haven't been copied over already. The first run for this command will output something such as this:
Copied migration [timestamp_1]_create_blorgh_articles.blorgh.rb from blorgh Copied migration [timestamp_2]_create_blorgh_comments.blorgh.rb from blorgh
The first timestamp ([timestamp_1]
) will be the current time,
and the second timestamp ([timestamp_2]
) will be the current
time plus a second. The reason for this is so that the migrations for the
engine are run after any existing migrations in the application.
To run these migrations within the context of the application, simply run
rake db:migrate
. When accessing the engine through
http://localhost:3000/blog
, the articles will be empty. This
is because the table created inside the application is different from the
one created within the engine. Go ahead, play around with the newly mounted
engine. You'll find that it's the same as when it was only an
engine.
If you would like to run migrations only from one engine, you can do it by
specifying SCOPE
:
rake db:migrate SCOPE=blorgh
This may be useful if you want to revert engine's migrations before removing it. To revert all migrations from blorgh engine you can run code such as:
rake db:migrate SCOPE=blorgh VERSION=0
Using a Class Provided by the Application¶ ↑
Using a Model Provided by the Application¶ ↑
When an engine is created, it may want to use specific classes from an
application to provide links between the pieces of the engine and the
pieces of the application. In the case of the blorgh
engine,
making articles and comments have authors would make a lot of sense.
A typical application might have a User
class that would be
used to represent authors for an article or a comment. But there could be a
case where the application calls this class something different, such as
Person
. For this reason, the engine should not hardcode
associations specifically for a User
class.
To keep it simple in this case, the application will have a class called
User
that represents the users of the application (we'll
get into making this configurable further on). It can be generated using
this command inside the application:
rails g model user name:string
The rake db:migrate
command needs to be run here to ensure
that our application has the users
table for future use.
Also, to keep it simple, the articles form will have a new text field
called author_name
, where users can elect to put their name.
The engine will then take this name and either create a new
User
object from it, or find one that already has that name.
The engine will then associate the article with the found or created
User
object.
First, the author_name
text field needs to be added to the
app/views/blorgh/articles/_form.html.erb
partial inside the
engine. This can be added above the title
field with this
code:
<div class="field"> <%= f.label :author_name %><br> <%= f.text_field :author_name %> </div>
Next, we need to update our
Blorgh::ArticleController#article_params
method to permit the
new form parameter:
def article_params params.require(:article).permit(:title, :text, :author_name) end
The Blorgh::Article
model should then have some code to
convert the author_name
field into an actual User
object and associate it as that article's author
before
the article is saved. It will also need to have an
attr_accessor
set up for this field, so that the setter and
getter methods are defined for it.
To do all this, you'll need to add the attr_accessor
for
author_name
, the association for the author and the
before_save
call into
app/models/blorgh/article.rb
. The author
association will be hard-coded to the User
class for the time
being.
attr_accessor :author_name belongs_to :author, class_name: "User" before_save :set_author private def set_author self.author = User.find_or_create_by(name: author_name) end
By representing the author
association's object with the
User
class, a link is established between the engine and the
application. There needs to be a way of associating the records in the
blorgh_articles
table with the records in the
users
table. Because the association is called
author
, there should be an author_id
column added
to the blorgh_articles
table.
To generate this new column, run this command within the engine:
$ bin/rails g migration add_author_id_to_blorgh_articles author_id:integer
NOTE: Due to the migration's name and the column specification after it, Rails will automatically know that you want to add a column to a specific table and write that into the migration for you. You don't need to tell it any more than this.
This migration will need to be run on the application. To do that, it must first be copied using this command:
$ rake blorgh:install:migrations
Notice that only one migration was copied over here. This is because the first two migrations were copied over the first time this command was run.
NOTE Migration [timestamp]_create_blorgh_articles.blorgh.rb from blorgh has been skipped. Migration with the same name already exists. NOTE Migration [timestamp]_create_blorgh_comments.blorgh.rb from blorgh has been skipped. Migration with the same name already exists. Copied migration [timestamp]_add_author_id_to_blorgh_articles.blorgh.rb from blorgh
Run the migration using:
$ rake db:migrate
Now with all the pieces in place, an action will take place that will
associate an author - represented by a record in the users
table - with an article, represented by the blorgh_articles
table from the engine.
Finally, the author's name should be displayed on the article's
page. Add this code above the “Title” output inside
app/views/blorgh/articles/show.html.erb
:
<p> <b>Author:</b> <%= @article.author %> </p>
By outputting @article.author
using the <%=
tag, the to_s
method will be called on the object. By default,
this will look quite ugly:
#<User:0x00000100ccb3b0>
This is undesirable. It would be much better to have the user's name
there. To do this, add a to_s
method to the User
class within the application:
def to_s name end
Now instead of the ugly Ruby object output, the author's name will be displayed.
Using a Controller Provided by the Application¶ ↑
Because Rails controllers generally share code for things like
authentication and accessing session variables, they inherit from
ApplicationController
by default. Rails engines, however are
scoped to run independently from the main application, so each engine gets
a scoped ApplicationController
. This namespace prevents code
collisions, but often engine controllers need to access methods in the main
application's ApplicationController
. An easy way to
provide this access is to change the engine's scoped
ApplicationController
to inherit from the main
application's ApplicationController
. For our Blorgh engine
this would be done by changing
app/controllers/blorgh/application_controller.rb
to look like:
module Blorgh class ApplicationController < ::ApplicationController end end
By default, the engine's controllers inherit from
Blorgh::ApplicationController
. So, after making this change
they will have access to the main application's
ApplicationController
, as though they were part of the main
application.
This change does require that the engine is run from a Rails application
that has an ApplicationController
.
Configuring an Engine¶ ↑
This section covers how to make the User
class configurable,
followed by general configuration tips for the engine.
Setting Configuration Settings in the Application¶ ↑
The next step is to make the class that represents a User
in
the application customizable for the engine. This is because that class may
not always be User
, as previously explained. To make this
setting customizable, the engine will have a configuration setting called
author_class
that will be used to specify which class
represents users inside the application.
To define this configuration setting, you should use a
mattr_accessor
inside the Blorgh
module for the
engine. Add this line to lib/blorgh.rb
inside the engine:
mattr_accessor :author_class
This method works like its brothers, attr_accessor
and
cattr_accessor
, but provides a setter and getter method on the
module with the specified name. To use it, it must be referenced using
Blorgh.author_class
.
The next step is to switch the Blorgh::Article
model over to
this new setting. Change the belongs_to
association inside
this model (app/models/blorgh/article.rb
) to this:
belongs_to :author, class_name: Blorgh.author_class
The set_author
method in the Blorgh::Article
model should also use this class:
self.author = Blorgh.author_class.constantize.find_or_create_by(name: author_name)
To save having to call constantize
on the
author_class
result all the time, you could instead just
override the author_class
getter method inside the
Blorgh
module in the lib/blorgh.rb
file to always
call constantize
on the saved value before returning the
result:
def self.author_class @@author_class.constantize end
This would then turn the above code for set_author
into this:
self.author = Blorgh.author_class.find_or_create_by(name: author_name)
Resulting in something a little shorter, and more implicit in its behavior.
The author_class
method should always return a
Class
object.
Since we changed the author_class
method to return a
Class
instead of a String
, we must also modify
our belongs_to
definition in the Blorgh::Article
model:
belongs_to :author, class_name: Blorgh.author_class.to_s
To set this configuration setting within the application, an initializer should be used. By using an initializer, the configuration will be set up before the application starts and calls the engine's models, which may depend on this configuration setting existing.
Create a new initializer at config/initializers/blorgh.rb
inside the application where the blorgh
engine is installed
and put this content in it:
Blorgh.author_class = "User"
WARNING: It's very important here to use the String
version of the class, rather than the class itself. If you were to use the
class, Rails would attempt to load that class and then reference the
related table. This could lead to problems if the table wasn't already
existing. Therefore, a String
should be used and then
converted to a class using constantize
in the engine later on.
Go ahead and try to create a new article. You will see that it works
exactly in the same way as before, except this time the engine is using the
configuration setting in config/initializers/blorgh.rb
to
learn what the class is.
There are now no strict dependencies on what the class is, only what the
API for the class must be. The engine simply requires this class to define
a find_or_create_by
method which returns an object of that
class, to be associated with an article when it's created. This object,
of course, should have some sort of identifier by which it can be
referenced.
General Engine Configuration¶ ↑
Within an engine, there may come a time where you wish to use things such as initializers, internationalization or other configuration options. The great news is that these things are entirely possible, because a Rails engine shares much the same functionality as a Rails application. In fact, a Rails application's functionality is actually a superset of what is provided by engines!
If you wish to use an initializer - code that should run before the engine
is loaded - the place for it is the config/initializers
folder. This directory's functionality is explained in the Initializers section of the
Configuring guide, and works precisely the same way as the
config/initializers
directory inside an application. The same
thing goes if you want to use a standard initializer.
For locales, simply place the locale files in the
config/locales
directory, just like you would in an
application.
Testing an engine¶ ↑
When an engine is generated, there is a smaller dummy application created
inside it at test/dummy
. This application is used as a
mounting point for the engine, to make testing the engine extremely simple.
You may extend this application by generating controllers, models or views
from within the directory, and then use those to test your engine.
The test
directory should be treated like a typical Rails
testing environment, allowing for unit, functional and integration tests.
Functional Tests¶ ↑
A matter worth taking into consideration when writing functional tests is
that the tests are going to be running on an application - the
test/dummy
application - rather than your engine. This is due
to the setup of the testing environment; an engine needs an application as
a host for testing its main functionality, especially controllers. This
means that if you were to make a typical GET
to a controller
in a controller's functional test like this:
module Blorgh class FooControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase def test_index get :index ... end end end
It may not function correctly. This is because the application doesn't
know how to route these requests to the engine unless you explicitly tell
it how. To do this, you must set the @routes
instance variable to the engine's route set in your setup code:
module Blorgh class FooControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase setup do @routes = Engine.routes end def test_index get :index ... end end end
This tells the application that you still want to perform a
GET
request to the index
action of this
controller, but you want to use the engine's route to get there, rather
than the application's one.
This also ensures that the engine's URL helpers will work as expected in your tests.
Improving engine functionality¶ ↑
This section explains how to add and/or override engine MVC functionality in the main Rails application.
Overriding Models and Controllers¶ ↑
Engine model and controller classes can be extended by open classing them in the main Rails application (since model and controller classes are just Ruby classes that inherit Rails specific functionality). Open classing an Engine class redefines it for use in the main application. This is usually implemented by using the decorator pattern.
For simple class modifications, use Class#class_eval
. For
complex class modifications, consider using
ActiveSupport::Concern
.
A note on Decorators and Loading Code¶ ↑
Because these decorators are not referenced by your Rails application itself, Rails' autoloading system will not kick in and load your decorators. This means that you need to require them yourself.
Here is some sample code to do this:
# lib/blorgh/engine.rb module Blorgh class Engine < ::Rails::Engine isolate_namespace Blorgh config.to_prepare do Dir.glob(Rails.root + "app/decorators /*_decorator*.rb").each do |c| require_dependency(c) end end end end
This doesn't apply to just Decorators, but anything that you add in an engine that isn't referenced by your main application.
Implementing Decorator Pattern Using Class#class_eval¶ ↑
Adding* Article#time_since_created
:
# MyApp/app/decorators/models/blorgh/article_decorator.rb Blorgh::Article.class_eval do def time_since_created Time.current - created_at end end
# Blorgh/app/models/article.rb class Article < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :comments end
Overriding* Article#summary
:
# MyApp/app/decorators/models/blorgh/article_decorator.rb Blorgh::Article.class_eval do def summary "#{title} - #{truncate(text)}" end end
# Blorgh/app/models/article.rb class Article < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :comments def summary "#{title}" end end
Implementing Decorator Pattern Using ActiveSupport::Concern¶ ↑
Using Class#class_eval
is great for simple adjustments, but
for more complex class modifications, you might want to consider using ActiveSupport::Concern.
ActiveSupport::Concern manages load order of interlinked dependent modules
and classes at run time allowing you to significantly modularize your code.
Adding* Article#time_since_created
and
Overriding Article#summary
:
# MyApp/app/models/blorgh/article.rb class Blorgh::Article < ActiveRecord::Base include Blorgh::Concerns::Models::Article def time_since_created Time.current - created_at end def summary "#{title} - #{truncate(text)}" end end
# Blorgh/app/models/article.rb class Article < ActiveRecord::Base include Blorgh::Concerns::Models::Article end
# Blorgh/lib/concerns/models/article module Blorgh::Concerns::Models::Article extend ActiveSupport::Concern # 'included do' causes the included code to be evaluated in the # context where it is included (article.rb), rather than being # executed in the module's context (blorgh/concerns/models/article). included do attr_accessor :author_name belongs_to :author, class_name: "User" before_save :set_author private def set_author self.author = User.find_or_create_by(name: author_name) end end def summary "#{title}" end module ClassMethods def some_class_method 'some class method string' end end end
Overriding Views¶ ↑
When Rails looks for a view to render, it will first look in the
app/views
directory of the application. If it cannot find the
view there, it will check in the app/views
directories of all
engines that have this directory.
When the application is asked to render the view for
Blorgh::ArticlesController
's index action, it will first
look for the path app/views/blorgh/articles/index.html.erb
within the application. If it cannot find it, it will look inside the
engine.
You can override this view in the application by simply creating a new file
at app/views/blorgh/articles/index.html.erb
. Then you can
completely change what this view would normally output.
Try this now by creating a new file at
app/views/blorgh/articles/index.html.erb
and put this content
in it:
<h1>Articles</h1> <%= link_to "New Article", new_article_path %> <% @articles.each do |article| %> <h2><%= article.title %></h2> <small>By <%= article.author %></small> <%= simple_format(article.text) %> <hr> <% end %>
Routes¶ ↑
Routes inside an engine are isolated from the application by default. This
is done by the isolate_namespace
call inside the
Engine
class. This essentially means that the application and
its engines can have identically named routes and they will not clash.
Routes inside an engine are drawn on the Engine
class within
config/routes.rb
, like this:
Blorgh::Engine.routes.draw do resources :articles end
By having isolated routes such as this, if you wish to link to an area of
an engine from within an application, you will need to use the engine's
routing proxy method. Calls to normal routing methods such as
articles_path
may end up going to undesired locations if both
the application and the engine have such a helper defined.
For instance, the following example would go to the application's
articles_path
if that template was rendered from the
application, or the engine's articles_path
if it was
rendered from the engine:
<%= link_to "Blog articles", articles_path %>
To make this route always use the engine's articles_path
routing helper method, we must call the method on the routing proxy method
that shares the same name as the engine.
<%= link_to "Blog articles", blorgh.articles_path %>
If you wish to reference the application inside the engine in a similar
way, use the main_app
helper:
<%= link_to "Home", main_app.root_path %>
If you were to use this inside an engine, it would always
go to the application's root. If you were to leave off the
main_app
“routing proxy” method call, it could potentially go
to the engine's or application's root, depending on where it was
called from.
If a template rendered from within an engine attempts to use one of the
application's routing helper methods, it may result in an undefined
method call. If you encounter such an issue, ensure that you're not
attempting to call the application's routing methods without the
main_app
prefix from within the engine.
Assets¶ ↑
Assets within an engine work in an identical way to a full application.
Because the engine class inherits from Rails::Engine
, the
application will know to look up assets in the engine's
'app/assets' and 'lib/assets' directories.
Like all of the other components of an engine, the assets should be
namespaced. This means that if you have an asset called
style.css
, it should be placed at
app/assets/stylesheets/[engine name]/style.css
, rather than
app/assets/stylesheets/style.css
. If this asset isn't
namespaced, there is a possibility that the host application could have an
asset named identically, in which case the application's asset would
take precedence and the engine's one would be ignored.
Imagine that you did have an asset located at
app/assets/stylesheets/blorgh/style.css
To include this asset
inside an application, just use stylesheet_link_tag
and
reference the asset as if it were inside the engine:
<%= stylesheet_link_tag "blorgh/style.css" %>
You can also specify these assets as dependencies of other assets using Asset Pipeline require statements in processed files:
/* = require blorgh/style
INFO. Remember that in order to use languages like Sass or CoffeeScript,
you should add the relevant library to your engine's
.gemspec
.
Separate Assets & Precompiling¶ ↑
There are some situations where your engine's assets are not required
by the host application. For example, say that you've created an admin
functionality that only exists for your engine. In this case, the host
application doesn't need to require admin.css
or
admin.js
. Only the gem's admin layout needs these assets.
It doesn't make sense for the host app to include
"blorgh/admin.css"
in its stylesheets. In this
situation, you should explicitly define these assets for precompilation.
This tells sprockets to add your engine assets when rake
assets:precompile
is triggered.
You can define assets for precompilation in engine.rb
:
initializer "blorgh.assets.precompile" do |app| app.config.assets.precompile += %w(admin.css admin.js) end
For more information, read the Asset Pipeline guide.
Other Gem Dependencies¶ ↑
Gem dependencies inside an engine should be specified inside the
.gemspec
file at the root of the engine. The reason is that
the engine may be installed as a gem. If dependencies were to be specified
inside the Gemfile
, these would not be recognized by a
traditional gem install and so they would not be installed, causing the
engine to malfunction.
To specify a dependency that should be installed with the engine during a
traditional gem install
, specify it inside the
Gem::Specification
block inside the .gemspec
file
in the engine:
s.add_dependency "moo"
To specify a dependency that should only be installed as a development dependency of the application, specify it like this:
s.add_development_dependency "moo"
Both kinds of dependencies will be installed when bundle
install
is run inside of the application. The development
dependencies for the gem will only be used when the tests for the engine
are running.
Note that if you want to immediately require dependencies when the engine is required, you should require them before the engine's initialization. For example:
require 'other_engine/engine' require 'yet_another_engine/engine' module MyEngine class Engine < ::Rails::Engine end end